There is something seriously wrong with the government’s priorities when the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declares that churches should be closed as non- essential and abortion clinics remain open as they provide an “essential service”.

While all attention is being focused on the current lock down, the abortion industry is promoting telehealth medical abortions as the solution to provide access to this “essential service”.

The passing of the appalling anti-life and anti-feminist Abortion Legislation Act perpetrated by the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern now allows medical abortions to be provided by ringing an 0800 number. The lethal abortion drugs are then couriered to the women. This is a deplorable abandonment of women who deserve to be treated with compassion and respect and given a face to face consultation.

The Prime Minister and her government have placed the nation in lock down to save lives, but has no regard for the unborn. Since the lock down began on the 25 March two elderly women and two elderly men have tragically died from coronavirus, however an estimated 665 innocent and defenceless unborn children have been murdered, mainly in Public Hospitals, authorised and funded by the government as an essential and core health service.

Prime Minister we have to ask you, why is their killing treated as an “essential service” and why are their lives considered of little value and not worthy of protection. Why are they not “one of us”?

Human life commences at conception and it is endowed by its Creator with an inalienable right to life. It should be received with profound respect and afforded the protection that is due to the human person. Every embryo, foetus, unborn child is a unique and unrepeatable miracle of God’s loving creation.

The Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act 1977 has been amended following the enactment of the new Abortion legislation Act 2020 andprovides protection under section 14, for the conscience of those who respect life and want nothing to do with the killing of unborn children. No person is obliged under the amended act to provide, or assist with providing any of the following, contraception, sterilisation, or abortion.

We all have a duty to protect human life from the moment of its conception. Right to Life believes that under the amended legislation that pharmacists have the legal right to refuse on conscience grounds, to fill prescriptions for lethal abortion drugs and that courier firms and their staff the right to refuse to receive and deliver consignments of abortion drugs to women or to any other address.

Mifepristone and misoprostol drugs are not medication but rather murder pills. The sole purpose of Mifepristone is to starve a growing human embryo of nourishment and cause its death. The purpose of Misoprostol in a medical abortion is to expel the human embryo from its mother’s womb.

When a doctor sends abortion pills to a woman whom he has spoken to over the phone, all medical supervision for the good of the mother ceases.

He does not know who, when, where or by whom the lethal drugs will be taken.

He does not know if a woman is being coerced or threatened with violence to take the pills.

He does not know whether the woman will suffer an adverse reaction to the medication in what can only be described as a setting where medical attention is not immediately available.

Telehealth will be used to hide incest, rape and violence against women.

This abandonment by the doctor is unethical and unprofessional and constitutes a further victimisation of vulnerable women. Our women deserve better than to be abandoned in their hour of need. The result of Telehealth is dead babies and wounded and damaged women. How long is this war on women going to continue?

The second reading of the End of Life Choice bill in May will present Parliament with a clear choice to either defend the ethics of the medical profession or to change those ethics to allow doctors to kill their patients or assist in their suicide. Should Parliament unwisely and unjustly pass the EOLCB, it will ultimately classify certain persons as having lives not worthy of life. Those persons may then be killed with the permission of the state. This same state will fund the killing as “a health service” and allow for their lives to be terminated in Public Hospitals.

This bill will empower a doctor to deprive a patient of their life without the knowledge of the patient’s family. The bill obliges the doctor to falsely record the underlying condition as the cause of death on the patients death certificate. While the doctor is then obliged to report the death as a euthanasia or assisted suicide death, we know from overseas experience that euthanasia deaths are considerably being under-reported. The doctor’s action in killing the patient or assisting in the patient’s suicide relies solely on the doctor’s self- reporting.

For 2,000 years the medical profession has upheld the Hippocratic tradition to do no harm. The total prohibition against the taking of the life of an innocent human being is the bedrock of both the law and medicine and is enshrined in the Crimes Act 1966. We remove it at our peril.

The state has a solemn duty to protect the inalienable right to life of every human being from conception to natural death. The first duty of the state is to legislate for the protection of the lives of its citizens and not to preside over their destruction. Assisted suicide and homicide are serious crimes and carry sentences of up to 14 years imprisonment on conviction for Assisted Suicide and up to life for Homicide. If passed, the EOLC bill will require a watershed change to our laws for these crimes.

Right to Life believe that members of Parliament who unwisely choose to support this contentious bill should forfeit their right to sit in our Parliament and are likely to pay a high price at the next election in 2020.

Killing is diametrically opposed to the role of physicians as healers. Should the EOLC bill be passed doctors who are opposed to euthanasia will be required to refer a patient seeking euthanasia to a doctor who is prepared to facilitate the killing. This a violation of the right of physicians to follow their conscience to do no harm and to respect the right to life of their patients.

Right to Life believes that if the EOLC bill is passed it will result in doctors who respect the sanctity of every human life and who refuse to participate in the killing of patients, being driven out of the medical profession.

We also believe that in a short time it will be a requirement for candidates to enter medical school to agree to being willing to kill their patients or assist in their suicide.

Parliament should not be seduced by David Seymour’s suggested amendments to the EOLCB to include a national referendum and support for the Palliative Care bill of the Hon. Maggie Barry. These suggestions are nothing but a thin smokescreen which he hopes may help in getting his bill through Parliament.

Right to Life calls upon our legislators to vote down this unprecedented attack on life and to uphold the common good. Our medical profession must be proteced from this dangerous and contentious bill.